Hours after President Donald Trump criticized a California judge for blocking his executive order on sanctuary cities, the president’s first nominee for a circuit court of appeals judgeship told senators those swipes, even coming from a president, wouldn’t influence his decisions.
Amul Thapar, currently a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, was nominated to fill a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Democratic senators showed up to prod the nominee on his legal views and pressed Thapar to address the president’s recent criticism of judges.
